What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

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Brandon Abell
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What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by Brandon Abell »

Good morning,

I upgraded to the latest release (0.9.6) today and was wondering what happened to the "Target Size" option for setting the output video quality? I used that *all the time* to make sure videos we record here at school end up small enough to be able to be uploaded to our video server. Is there some way to bring that back apart from downgrading?

Thank you.

B.
Flo
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by Flo »

It's gone. It's not coming back. A simple search would have turned up literally dozens of threads asking the same thing.
Deleted User 13735

Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by Deleted User 13735 »

My bitrate calculator that was designed just for Handbrake users can be downloaded for free here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20519276/Handbr ... ulator.xls
Brandon Abell
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by Brandon Abell »

Flo wrote:It's gone. It's not coming back. A simple search would have turned up literally dozens of threads asking the same thing.
Perhaps it should go in the FAQ then.
Brandon Abell
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by Brandon Abell »

musicvid wrote:My bitrate calculator that was designed just for Handbrake users can be downloaded for free here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20519276/Handbr ... ulator.xls
Thank you.
TedJ
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by TedJ »

Brandon Abell wrote:Perhaps it should go in the FAQ then.
Perhaps it should. Can't guarantee that anyone will read it prior to asking anyway, just like the release notes.
Smithcraft
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by Smithcraft »

Or using the search function in the forums.

SC
Registered55
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by Registered55 »

you can use "vidcoder"
red3recon
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by red3recon »

Flo wrote:A simple search would have turned up literally dozens of threads asking the same thing.
I did a "simple search" and this is the thread that came up #1 so I thought I would see "why" Target Size was gone instead of saying to do a simple search which is how I got here. Handbrake rocks and I appreciate the effort that goes into its development... the target size option was something I used every single encode.
musicvid wrote:My bitrate calculator that was designed just for Handbrake users can be downloaded for free here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20519276/Handbr ... ulator.xls
Thanks brother, for now I have reverted back to an older version, if I do go back up I will use this.
jamiemlaw
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by jamiemlaw »

The search returns posts by date, so of course this thread will turn up first, because it's the most recent.

Why is target size important to you? Why could you not switch to using average bitrate, or constant quality with a max bitrate set, or just straight constant quality?
red3recon
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by red3recon »

jamiemlaw wrote:The search returns posts by date, so of course this thread will turn up first, because it's the most recent.
Thanks
jamiemlaw wrote:Why is target size important to you? Why could you not switch to using average bitrate, or constant quality with a max bitrate set, or just straight constant quality?
So if there was a preview or displayed estimate of "resualtant size" when setting the average or constant quality that would be perfect! I only have so much space and want to keep each feature length movie ~ 2GB in size. Thanks for the reply!
Flo
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by Flo »

red3recon wrote:I only have so much space and want to keep each feature length movie ~ 2GB in size. Thanks for the reply!
A lot of movies don't need 2GB, even at 720p. By trying to hit a target of 2GB you're wasting a lot of space (which seems to be your main motivator) on movies that could be compressed further while starving those that would benefit from higher bitrates.
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s55
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by s55 »

I only have so much space and want to keep each feature length movie ~ 2GB in size. Thanks for the reply!
Perfect reason to use Constant Quality.

Taking a sample of 110 videos in my collection, at an average length of 1hr 40 minutes (All SD content):
Total: 163.75GB (Max: 2.9GB, Min 0.9GB)
Average: 1.48GB

So, if you'd used 2GB per encode, you'd have wasted 57GB

That is using The AppleTV2 preset, (RF20). In otherwords, good quality content.
You could easily nudge the RF up by .5~1 and save even more space and likely not notice much, if any difference in quality.
tamuuli
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by tamuuli »

..seriously can somebody please just re enable this option?? I understand that its not completely spot on but this is something I used every single time to estimate the video size (size is all that matters for me for storing a video on an hdd, not quality). And I don't wanna have to use any secondary tools like calculators, etc. Im about to change programs just cuz of this. I was gonna download vidcoder but it wasn't for mac. I appreciate all your guys work on such a complex and intensive (open source!!) project! and I'm in no way trying to demand or threaten or anything like that, I just really really miss this feature in by far my favorite video converter.
rollin_eng
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by rollin_eng »

s55 wrote:Taking a sample of 110 videos in my collection, at an average length of 1hr 40 minutes (All SD content):
Total: 163.75GB (Max: 2.9GB, Min 0.9GB)
Average: 1.48GB

So, if you'd used 2GB per encode, you'd have wasted 57GB
Listen to yourself:
tamuuli wrote:size is all that matters for me for storing a video on an hdd
He has told you how to save space. Why not try it?
tamuuli
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by tamuuli »

rollin_eng wrote:
s55 wrote:Taking a sample of 110 videos in my collection, at an average length of 1hr 40 minutes (All SD content):
Total: 163.75GB (Max: 2.9GB, Min 0.9GB)
Average: 1.48GB

So, if you'd used 2GB per encode, you'd have wasted 57GB
Listen to yourself:
tamuuli wrote:size is all that matters for me for storing a video on an hdd
He has told you how to save space. Why not try it?
Im confused.. I do my video conversions individually so of course I wouldn't convert a .9gb file to 2gbs? I only down convert. Am I missing something?
Last edited by tamuuli on Mon Apr 16, 2012 5:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
rollin_eng
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by rollin_eng »

tamuuli wrote: Yeah Im confused about that.. I do my video conversions individually so of course I wouldn't convert a .9gb file to 2gbs? I only down convert. Am I missing something?
I'm not sure what the question is, can you clarify?
tamuuli
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by tamuuli »

rollin_eng wrote:
tamuuli wrote: Yeah Im confused about that.. I do my video conversions individually so of course I wouldn't convert a .9gb file to 2gbs? I only down convert. Am I missing something?
I'm not sure what the question is, can you clarify?
How did he just teach me to save space?
rollin_eng
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by rollin_eng »

tamuuli wrote:How did he just teach me to save space?
By telling you to use constant quality encoding rather than forcing your encodes to 2gb in size.
tamuuli
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by tamuuli »

rollin_eng wrote:
tamuuli wrote:How did he just teach me to save space?
By telling you to use constant quality encoding rather than forcing your encodes to 2gb in size.
I think I'm still missing something. Are you saying that forcing a size most likely wastes space (because of something with conversion) or that forcing every file to 2gbs wastes space? I always down convert depending on the size (ex a 1.5gb file to 750mbs).
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s55
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by s55 »

@tammuuli
Perfect reason to use Constant Quality.

Taking a sample of 110 videos in my collection, at an average length of 1hr 40 minutes (All SD content):
Total: 163.75GB (Max: 2.9GB, Min 0.9GB)
Average: 1.48GB

So, if you'd used 2GB per encode, you'd have wasted 57GB

That is using The AppleTV2 preset, (RF20). In otherwords, good quality content.
You could easily nudge the RF up by .5~1 and save even more space and likely not notice much, if any difference in quality.

Let me expand on that.

The reason this varied file size happens is due to video complexity. Some scenes are complex, and thus require more bitrate to maintain quality, others are much simplier and thus compress better.
In other words, for 1 hour of video, 1 source might need 1GB, another source might need 0.5GB (assuming they are both close to equal quality)
You can't treat all sources the same since the sources themselves are very different.


By always defining a 2GB file, You'll have files that would have encoded file at 1.5GB with no noticable difference in quality in your collection. Therefor, you've wasted space.
rollin_eng
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by rollin_eng »

tamuuli wrote: I think I'm still missing something. Are you saying that forcing a size most likely wastes space
Correct. By letting the encoder chose the bitrate you will probably save space and get better quality (the encoder is smarter than you and I).
jamiemlaw
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by jamiemlaw »

I'm gonna reiterate what other people have been saying, but only because it's important:

Tamuuli, you seem to use Target File Size a way a lot of other people do: as a way to ensure your files don't exceed a certain size. But what you and everyone else don't seem to grasp is that while you will never end up with a movie that's goes over the target size, you'll never end up with one that's under that size either. If you use Constant Quality, there is always the likelihood of an encode coming out smaller than you expected. Given the poor quality encoders that people have used in the past, I get the feeling that they often overestimate the bit rate required to get good quality video. In your case, you suggested 2GB for a movie. That's 3000kbps. Very few SD movies encoded in HandBrake with constant quality ever reach that. Most are around 2000kbps and in the case of some cartoons, 1000kbps.

What we're saying, politely, is to stop whining and give constant quality a try. I would suggest you encode maybe a dozen or so movies - enough for you to get a feel for the kind of file sizes it produces. Because the file sizes will vary. But it depends on the type of film. After a while, either you'll find it works brilliantly, like most people here think it does. If after you've encoded a bunch of videos you find that they're consistently coming out larger than you like, or smaller, you can raise or lower the RF respectively to correct this (lower RF = better quality). What we're hoping here is that you'll find that while some movies come out larger than you were expecting, some come out smaller, and they average out at being the right size.
tamuuli
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by tamuuli »

rollin_eng wrote:
tamuuli wrote: I think I'm still missing something. Are you saying that forcing a size most likely wastes space
Correct. By letting the encoder chose the bitrate you will probably save space and get better quality (the encoder is smarter than you and I).
Ahh.. Yea that makes sense. I always kind of figured that, I just liked the target size because of convenience. It would be cool/convenient if you could input a 'target size' and then the program/encoder would calculate a bit-rate that would make the size roughly around the target size. The program could even prompt with some kind of warning message about loss of quality, etc. This action would be very helpful for the average user (most of handbrakes 'market'). Its not about laziness, just convenience for those in a hurry/don't want to calculate things for every conversion. And for those that really cared about getting the most efficient conversion could do the calculating. As I said Im not trying to demand something, this function would just be very nice and is standard in other applications.

As of right now, I was happy just downgrading to Handbrake 0.9.5 to re-enable that function, but as time passes I might have to start looking for a new solution.

I have huge respect for you guys and everything you have done! Me and others (all the other forum post and the numerous articles on other websites only a few days after the update) are just really hoping that the Handbrake team will either re-enable or look for a similar solution.

-Tamuuli
Flo
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Re: What happened to the "Target Size" quality option?

Post by Flo »

tamuuli wrote:Its not about laziness, just convenience for those in a hurry/don't want to calculate things for every conversion. And for those that really cared about getting the most efficient conversion could do the calculating. As I said Im not trying to demand something, this function would just be very nice and is standard in other applications.
You're still not getting it. You don't have to any calculations with constant quality. It's literally the quickest way to convert without having to worry about bitrates at all.
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